PR and Blogging Outreach: Practical Tips

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In my first guest post on Tom Pick’s WebMarketCentral Blog I looked at the macro issues of PR and blogging. That post primarily focused on the macro issues impacting the quality of outreach – both traditional media and blogging.

Since that original post, your can read my follow up guest post that highlights my 8 Tips About Blogging Outreach. To me, good blogger relationships is one part doing your research, one part old school PR and one part transparency. Some additional resources on this topic include:

1. Erik Sebellin-Ross’ Tech for PR: Erik has included a page on Social Media Basics and his tips for blogging.

2. The Friendly Ghost’s post on Ghost Blogging: when the chips are down the balloon goes up and the lights go on. Discusses if ghost-writing a blog is advisable

3. Lifehacker’s guide to weblog comments. Great points about the do’s and don’ts of blog commenting.

4. Micro Persuasion: Steve Rubel started a lively conversation with his post on The Future of PR is Participation: Not Pitching  Can PR go beyond pitching and understand how to leverage social media?

5. B.L. Ochman included her MaketingSherpa article on How to Pitch Me – and Other Bloggers – with PR on her blog

6. Lee Odden’s Online Marketing Blog discusses How NOT to pitch a blogger

7. Update: Sept. 4, 6:25 pm PST: In the August 27 PR Week, Renee Blodgett of Blodgett Communications was quoted, “Most start ups know to use blogs to clarify information about their brand and to correct inaccuracies. The PR industry should not be intimidated by ths medium that is really an extension of basic PR strategy.” Um – maybe they just need to now how to reach out to bloggers…

8. Update: Sept. 5, 6:01 pm PST: Paul Stamatiou includes his Checklist for Public Relations People. How many more people are going to include spell the name correctly I wonder?

9. Update: Sept. 10, 1:32 pm PST: Jeremiah Owyang of “Web Strategy by Jeremiah” provides his throught on this topic in his post on “How PR professionals should pitch bloggers.” Jeremiah states, “Always remember that I’m thinking of my readers first, so if the content is not going to help them, I’m not going to point to it –think backwards.”As I read all of these articles, it’s amazing that there are common threads throughout. Let’s see if my fellow colleagues can truly heed the advice that these handful of bloggers provide.

10. Update: Sept. 12, 9:59 am PST: Wow, the postings just keep on coming. This one is from Rohit Bhargava of Influential Marketing Blog. This posting is from the Ogilvy Digital team and is “[their] first stab at creating something transparent that could rebuild some credibility in the eyes of bloggers who have had to hear too many clueless pitches from inexperienced PR and marketing folks.” Check out The Ogilvy Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics (Beta Version). And why is everything a beta now?

When Google Penalizes You – Robin Good’s MasterNewMedia Story

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 Last week, Robin Good of MasterNewMedia suddenly experienced a drop of incoming traffic. As an indepedent online publisher, Robin relies on organic searches (primarily Google) for his business. Unbenownst to him, his site somehow ran afoul of the Google’s guidelines, and his research via Google’s Webmaster Central yielded some clues to why his site was penalized by Google.

According to ComScore, Google has nearly 50% of the search market share as of May 2007 of this year. If you inadvertently do something that goes against Google’s policies, you could lose a significant portion of your audience. And if traffic to the blog is how you are measuring success to your client, then how do you manage this?

I strongly advise any PR practictioner advising clients on blogs to read the full story – Google Nightmare is Over. Links to the series of articles are located at the bottom of this posting.

PR and Blogging Outreach – Macro Issues

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My guest post on “PR and Blogging Outreach – Macro Issues” has just appeared on Tom Pick’s WebMarketCentral Blog. In a two part series, I look at how blogging is impacting the PR industry and how PR professionals pitch bloggers.Issues that I address in this first posting are 1) multigenerational workforce, 2) focus on results, not quality, and 3) how agency structures promotes billing, not client service.

Look forward to hearing what you think.